Mobile Ad Intermediaries Must, and Will Consolidate

"The real pain point in mobile advertising is removing the friction in spending the way that brands want to spend," says Eric Litman, Medialets CEO and chairman. A major reason there is friction is that there is so much market fragmentation.

So you know what's coming: a massive consolidation wave that will create a relative handful of market intermediaries that take friction out of the market.

Marketers say device fragmentation and lack of standardized metrics and ad formats are among mobile advertising's biggest challenges, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau's recent survey of 300 U.S. marketers that use mobile advertising.

Pervasive systems for serving, measuring and creating mobile display ads will require both standards and firm consolidation, with the latter arguably more significant than the former.

Right now, there are too many isolated solutions that work for specific ad networks, apps or devices. The infrastructure to make one ad, then run it many places, with easy measurement, remains to be created.

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